


Police Work

by koanju (verstehen)



Category: Heavy Rain
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verstehen/pseuds/koanju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The secret ending where Carter Blake saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Police Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Croik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/gifts).



_Fucking feds_ , Carter Blake thought, pursing his lips as he stared at the empty interrogation room. He didn't know how and he sure as hell couldn't prove it but he was sure that the fed had let Mars out of the station. He didn't understand why the fed was wrapped up in the theory that Ethan Mars wasn't the Origami Killer. Everything fit; even Mars' shrink had said the man had done it. And now the man was gone from the police station before Blake had a chance to _really_ interrogate him.

"Chief," he called to his boss. "I'm going out to deal with this personally." Without waiting for an answer, Blake stormed out of the police station and down to his own car. He slammed the door shut and jammed the keys into the ignition. "Shit," Blake muttered and fished out a cigarette. The nicotine always helped him think.

Sucking in a lungful, he sighed, looking up at the sky. "Kid's dead anyway," he told himself and started the car. The best bet seemed to go back to Mars's place and search it again. Maybe there was something they'd missed the first time around.

Keeping the cigarette clenched tightly between his teeth as he drove, Blake went over the facts in his mind:

1\. Ethan Mars felt guilty over the loss of one of his children.  
2\. Ethan Mars had been in a coma -- head trauma fucked people up.  
3\. Ethan Mars had periodic blackouts -- both his shrink and his ex-wife said so.  
4\. Shaun Mars disappeared when Ethan Mars was supposed to be watching him.  
5\. There was no discernable connections between Mars and any of the other victims -- there was no easy way for Mars to scout or take any of the children.  
6\. Everybody but the fucking fed thought Ethan Mars was guilty as sin -- and unfortunately the fucking fed hadn't been wrong about anything in the case so far.

He rolled down the window to the car and flicked his near burned-out cigarette outside. "Shit," Blake repeated to himself and turned on the lights. After rolling the window back up, he pulled his cell phone out and speed dialed back to the station.

"Ramirez."

"Jose, it's Blake. We get the dump of Mars's phone records yet?"

"Yeah," the junior detective said. Blake listened to the sound of Ramirez shuffling papers. "I've got it here. Doesn't look like much unusual activity, take-out, his ex-wife, mostly. There's one number that keeps coming up over the past couple of days, since the kid disappeared though. The calls weren't answered. I'm pretty sure Mars ditched his phone around the time the kid was taken."

His hands tightened on the wheel at the news. "Mars has a partner with the kid. You trace the number?"

"Waiting on the phone company for that," Ramirez said, his tone sounding apologetic. "We've got the phone that he was arrested with though."

Blake cocked his head to the side, thinking, as he pulled into Mars's street. "A burner phone?"

"Yeah. There's no activity but incoming texts and videos," Ramirez explained. "It's still in processing. The lab guys have got the sim card and are pulling the date."

"Tell 'em to hurry the hell up; that data could be what we need to catch a killer."

He could hear Ramirez's grin over the phone. "Yeah, I'll light a fire under their asses. I'll get CSU to dump the video files and send them to your phone."

"Won't do any good; I've got a piece of shit phone, Jose, remember? I hate those fucking things."

"Whatever, Blake," Ramirez told him, humor in his tone. "Get with the fucking times already."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, quit you're bitching. What do you think you are, my wife?"

"Just keep your pants on," Ramirez said, laughing. "Stay on the line and I'll watch the files and let you know what they are." The line went dead briefly before shifting into the hold message.

He used the time to pull in front of Mars's house, waving to the unis sitting on it, in case Mars was stupid enough to come back and entered the home. The place looked pretty dim and grungy for a guy who used to be a top-notch architect. Blake figured the wife had got the money in the settlement. Spying a bill for Memorial Hospital he revised his opinion -- the cost of the hospital stay and the coma might have sucked a shit of money out of the couple's savings too. He turned to look at the bureau where a pile of mail was neatly stacked and went through it one-handedly. Bill, bill, notice from the kid's school about parent-teacher conferences, empty envelope with no return address.

Blake frowned at the last, turning the speaker up on his phone and clipping it back to his belt. The postmark was recent and local but the envelope itself looked aged, as if it had been sitting for a while. The lack of a return address was also unusual. He stuck his head outside and called to the uniforms sitting in the patrol car. "Hey, get a tech out here to process something." He saw them nod and one of the unis reach over to pick up the radio to call it in.

"Blake!" Ramirez's voice came over the speakerphone sounding panicked.

"Yeah?"

"This is some sick shit. Mars had video files of his kid. The videos are time and date stamped, so we know he was alive yesterday. But the kid's stuck somewhere underground; the sewers maybe. You can see the water rising up around him. The texts are some sort of code. They're working on breaking it now."

"Tell them to concentrate on the most recent text. When was that from?"

Ramirez's voice was quiet when he answered, "This morning. Before we picked Mars up."

"Shit," Blake cursed. "If he's innocent… no wonder he ran. If he's guilty, it's a damn good ploy to make himself look innocent."

"I think the fed might've been right, boss," Ramirez said quietly. "I know the fucking feds couldn't find their ass with a map but that one was damn spooky."

"I know, Jose," he agreed and dropped the mail back onto the bureau, marking the envelope for the CSU pick-up. "Tell them to work faster; this is the first real lead we've got."

"Right, boss. I'll call you back when we've got something." Blake reached down and flicked the speakerphone off as Ramirez hung up.

They weren't going to crack the case with fancy government gadgets. They were going to crack the case and they were damn well going to do it with _police work_.

Blake just hoped they did it in time for Shaun Mars.

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I loved Heavy Rain, I kept thinking about how stupid the police were. Just a few moments of basic REAL police work (as opposed to the dramatically licensed police work the game shows) and it would've been pretty obvious that Ethan Mars was not the killer and who the real killer was.


End file.
